Beauty.
Stillness.
Expansion.
Oneness.
Joy.
Timelessness.
A moment of awe.
What exactly is awe, anyway? With most emotions we can easily start spouting a definition. Ask what love is, or anger, or pride, or despair, and the words come freely. But awe… we can instantly remember how it FEELS, can often recall a specific time when we felt it, but when it comes to DESCRIBING what it is, well……
In the book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, one of the leading researchers of awe (yes, that is a thing!) defines awe as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world, the emotion we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don’t understand.” He concludes from his research that not only does awe trigger specific positive biochemical responses within our bodies, but that it “connects our individual selves with the vast forces of life.”
And so this feeling, this experience that can be so challenging to describe with words but so deep and rich and revelatory, how do we experience it in our lives?
I see a parallel of sorts between falling in love and falling in awe. If you want to experience falling in love, then you have to at least know what falling in love is like and its value, then you need to know what type of situation and person may lead to you falling in love, and then you need to take actions to put yourself in that situation (i.e. dating)— but then, you just have to wait and see what happens… you certainly can’t force love, you just have to live life… and love may sneak up on you when you aren’t even expecting it.
Awe can be the same way. You have to have an idea of what awe is and its value, then you must know what kind of situation might lead you to experience it (like experiencing nature or beauty or human connection), and then put yourself in situations that may wind up letting you experience awe. You can’t force the experience of awe… but if you’re lucky awe might just sneak up and suprise you.
Sooooo… back to this evening. I learned a few years ago that immersing myself in hot water helps me relax, destress from a hectic day, and “turn my brain off”— a little like meditation does for some people. So this evening I climbed into my hot tub on my back deck. I can veg out in the 104 degree water for an hour or more, until my hair is drenched with sweat and I feel very happy.
I usually listen to a podcast, but tonight I felt like I didn’t want to stuff my brain with anything more. I also as a matter of practicality always turn on the lights on the deck, but again tonight I just didn’t feel like it, and left them off so that I would be just soaking in the heat and the darkness.
With the deck lights off the forest in my back yard became a different world. My eyes beheld the delicate intricate web of hundreds of bare branches subtly backlit by the low-hanging clouds that were dimly reflecting the distant city lights. Here and there were small dapples of color provided by the street lights of neighbors, with swirls of steam rising from the water putting on the finishing magic touch.
And… it just happened. A little bit of awe just slowly washed over me. My heart and my spirit lifted. I. just. felt. it.
I thought, “What am I feeling? It’s beyond words, but if I had to choose words, which ones come close?”
Beauty.
Stillness.
Expansion.
Oneness.
Joy.
Timelessness.
My moment wasn’t forced, wasn’t even expected, but I had given myself some of the right ingredients— natural beauty, time to reflect and just be, the comfort and the warmth of the water— and God and Grace had done the rest.
I hesitated to take a picture, because I didn’t want to be taken out of the moment, and because I didn’t think my iPhone could do justice to what I was seeing. But again, God and Grace smiled on me, because the picture I took, well, it actually added to the awe, because it indeed captured the moment far beyond my expectations. A little miracle, all its own.
Which, now that I think about it, may be what awe is after all, when we are fortunate enough to experience it.
A little miracle, all its own.
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